Extensive travel often requires the traveller to handle their own luggage in walking through airports, hotels, or other various assembling and marshalling areas. The luggage is usually heavy when fully loaded and, therefore, the traveller often uses a dolly truck, bell-hop, or sky-cap to transport the luggage through these assembling and marshalling areas. These methods of transporting the luggage, however, are sometimes impractical, difficult, expensive, or burdensome to the traveller.
To solve this luggage transporting problem, wheels and retractable handles have been added to luggage to enable the traveller to easily transport the luggage through airports, hotels, and the like. Some examples of early types of wheeled luggage may be seen in U S. Pat. No. 2,925,283 by Stilger entitled "Luggage On Wheels"; U.S. Pat. No. Re. 28,757 by Cassimally entitled "Trolley Case"; and U.S. Pat. No. Re. 29,036 by Hager entitled "Luggage Transport Structure." Some types of wheeled luggage, such as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,087,102 by Sprague entitled "Hand Carryable Travel Container Convertable To Rollable Cart" and U.S. Pat. No. 4,314,624 by Royet entitled "Wheel-Mounted Luggage", have added retractable wheels to enhance the portability of the luggage. Others have attempted to strengthen the pulling or handle mechanism as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,048,649 by Carpenter et al. entitled "Luggage With PullHandle." Still others have applied the wheels and handle to garment bags to improve their portability as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,406,353 by Walker entitled "Wheeled Garment Bag" and U.S. Pat. No. 4,538,709 by Williams et al. entitled "Wheeled Garment Bag."
As also seen by the examples in U.S. Pat. No. 4,995,487 by Plath entitled "Wheeled Suitcase And Luggage Support" and U.S. Pat. No. 5,108,119 by Huang entitled "Wheeled Carrying Case", the wheeled luggage is typically constructed or manufactured by adding wheel mounts and wheels to a luggage body, welding together frames for the luggage, and/or mounting retractable handles thereon. The various types of wheeled luggage also usually receive rough treatment by the frequent traveller or luggage handling personnel. The previous wheeled luggage, however, does not provide structural strength, lightweight for ease of transporting and lifting, and ease of manufacturing because of the various manufacturing techniques required.
Thus, there is a need for wheeled luggage that is still lightweight, has structural strength, and is relatively easy to manufacture for the frequent traveller such as an airplane pilot or airplane stewardess.